Iguazu Falls

A couple of weeks ago I took a trip to Foz de Iguazu, some of the largest waterfalls in the world.  (They are certainly the largest in South America, and while Africa’s Victoria Falls are taller, Iguazu Falls pour out much more water.) They lie just an hour or so east of Paraguay’s border with Brazil and Argentina.

Unfortunately, I went through torrential downpours, but it was still an incredible sight.

If any of you dear readers hope to see it some day, I can't recommend the place enough. I stayed and viewed the falls from the Argentinian side, called Puerto Iguazu. Brazil owns part of the falls, but as far as I could tell, all of the prime views and best trails are in Argentina. So here's a goofy photo of me and a couple of snaps of the falls.

Tom Gavin.

Most of you from back home who have been following my blog know that I studied and worked in Philadelphia for several years before becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer. For much of that time, I lived with Tom Gavin (an old classmate of my father’s from architecture school) and his wife, Cara. I cannot think of my time in Philadelphia without thinking of morning coffees with Tom, the extravagant dinners that he cooked up, or the questions he peppered me with about Philadelphia’s streetscapes as we explored them. His generosity of spirit, curiosity and kind-heartedness, were a powerful demonstration about how I should interact with people, of what I should strive to be like. I took to calling him my godfather when explaining my relationship with him to other volunteers and with Paraguayans.

A month after I arrived in Potrero Pucu, Tom was diagnosed with an especially pernicious form of brain cancer. And as my experiences with Tom defined my time in Philly, his battle with brain cancer came to define my time in Paraguay a little too. He died last night. I’ll miss him very much.

Drama in PP

Taito is one of my closest friends in Potrero Pucu. He lives on a beautiful, lush parcel of land, and he makes his living by raising pigs, farming, and working for other land owners in the area. People respect him because he works hard, and has a gentle, self-effacing humor. He also has several children.

The other day I went to visit him, and we were sitting in the twilight when I asked him, “Taito, when are we going to restucco your floor?”

“I don’t know, Santo,” he said. “I have a big problem.”

That much is true. Taito life has plummeted into Steinbeckian depths in the last year beyond fathoming.

About six or seven months ago, Taito’s wife, Celestina, picked up and moved to Buenos Aires with the couple’s two daughters, Lorena, 19, and Andrea, 8. Taito, now in his late 40s, got her pregnant when she was in her late teens, and the two have been married ever since. It was a chaotic marriage, from the gossip flying around the community. Taito was abusive at times, and Celestina frequently provoked him. She certainly resented him, even going so far as telling me how her life hadn’t turned how she wanted it to in front of her husband. (Talk about awkward.)

So one day she upped and left, taking her two daughters, first to the pueblo 8km away, then Asuncion, and finally Buenos Aires.

That would be rough enough to deal with. But last week, a man in a neighboring community was shot to death. The assailants shot him in the neck and chest three times. The murder shocked everyone – after all, the biggest drama out here is usually a cow getting stolen, and here was a man shot THREE TIMES! But they were even more surprised when the police showed up in Potrero Pucu looking for Ale and Gonzalo – two well-liked local 15-year-olds. Gonzalo is Taito’s son, no less. The victim was one of the wealthy landowners he often worked for.

To say the community was flabbergasted would be a bit of an understatement.

The police alleged that Gonzalo, Ale, and a third boy had been involved in the shooting, and as information became more forthcoming, it became clear that the police believed that Gonzalo was the principal architect of the crime. He borrowed a rifle from Ale on the pretext of going hunting, went to his father’s boss’s house, and tried to rob the man.

But pretty much every family in the campo has a pistol or rifle for self protection. And so the victim emerged from his house with a gun (apparently) shot at Gonzalo.

The fact that he is in jail is bad enough. But under the circumstances in which Gonzalo allegedly killed the victim, many people around here worry that the victim’s family will try to avenge his death by killing him in prison, or killing Taito or Gonzalo’s younger brother, Milder.

A big problem, indeed.

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UPDATE

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So apparently one of the big problems in rural Paraguay - who knew - is the consumption of crack cocaine. (I should preface this by saying I have never seen anything like that in person, but hey, that's what people around here say)

Apparently, Gonzalo fell in with the wrong kids and started smoking the stuff. This is not totally surprising in retrospect. He told me a few times about how he used to race motorcycles on the newly constructed pavement five miles from PP. This is a 14-year-old, mind you, racing at up to 120-130mph on the equivalent of a souped-up Vespa.

In my earlier version of this post, I told you Gonzalo borrowed a rifle from another kid in my community, Ale. A third student from my community was also involved, though it's still not clear in what capacity. But Gonzalo and his two accomplices are scattered in jails around the country. Ale is in Villarrica, about three hours east of Asuncion, the other two in jails closer to the capital. There fates are unknown at this point, but they definitely did the deed. Their trials look to begin in a few weeks.

Taito was in terrible shape shortly after the incident, not surprisingly. He looked wan, and he must have lost 15lbs from the strain of it all. He looks a bit better now. His mother and friends rallied around him, as did his neighbors in Potrero Pucu, who had a meeting after the murder to basically provide a communal show of support for him. Fears about a revenge murder have thankfully not panned out. More as events warrant...

Boy with top, and my bus

some quick pics

It was really misty this morning... got some great photos.

Gone Fishin'

Tesho, my host dad, really likes to eat fish.

I find this surprising, since Paraguay is a landlocked country, and can’t haul delicious clams and cod, and other famous marine delights from the oceanic depths. (There are a few tasty fish in Paraguay’s rivers though, namely “merluza.) A roving truck sometimes sells fish, and markets in Paraguari – a city about 30km away) – sell fish, but both cases are cost prohibitive.

Of course, there is a creek about a half a mile from our house, and Tesho is an avid fisherman. But those fish are stubborn little critters, and sometimes he comes home with eight or nine tasty pescas, other times, nothing.

In retrospect, it’s not all that odd that he decided to take matters into his own hands. A few months ago, I noticed Tesho and Andres tearing up a section of earth behind his banana plot.

“We’re building a tajamar,” he said, after I asked him what the two were up to.

A tajamar is a man-made pond. Normally, Paraguayans dig them, or hire a tractor to excavate one so that grazing cattle will have a reliable water source. But Tesho, in his typical ingenious (or crazy) way, decided to dig a fish pond.

First he and Andres dug out a small pond, perhaps 5m x 10m, and 2/3 of a meter deep. However, over the next few months, whenever there was a spare day, Tesho would excavate the pond a little bit more, until it had tripled in size. Then he dug two smaller ponds adjacent to the first. In the next couple of weeks, he will probably remove the berms separating the three ponds.

When he wasn’t digging his pond, Tesho would go fishing. Any minnows became instant pond fodder – over several trips to the nearby arroyo, Tesho must have caught about a hundred fish that he used to stock his pond, now well filled with rainwater.

I mention all of this because the other day, Tesho decided he wanted to have a nice fish dinner. Andres and two neighbors fashioned a net out of a piece of black plastic netting they normally use to shade their vegetable gardens from the fierce summer heat, and hopped into the pond. They trawled the bottom of the pond and within 20 minutes had pulled out six fattened ex-minnows.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

It’s cold! I left the states almost a week ago, and it was sunny and warm. Days lasted for 14 hours, the temperature ranged from 60 degrees to over 80, and T-shirts were the uniform of the season.

A bit of a shock then to return to Paraguay, which is in full winter mode. I’m wearing a hoodie, a sweatshirt, a jacket, scarf, and wool cap as I write this.

What is winter like? Winter is short, between six weeks and two months, but it’s a dreary, damp couple of months. There are no heated buildings in my site, unlike the states – where the nearest café and hot cocoa, or heated bus, or car is just a few steps away. It is a constant chill that makes one feel like he'll never be warm again.

There’s no insulation, and in my case, no hot showers! Brr. When it starts getting chilly, I heat up four or five liters of water in my electric kettle and dump it in the black bucket that I use to wash myself, my dishes and my clothes. Then I hurry over to my outdoor bathroom, and sprint through a two-minute bucket bath, steam filling the small concrete cell. Bath finished, I whip back to my room, dive into my sleeping bag, and shiver.

Of course, this is all so much nicer than last year, when I took cold bucket baths (because you know, that’s what Paraguayans do). Antonio – whom I was living with at the time – told me, “You have to take them cold, because you will feel warmer after.”

He had a point. After a two-minute, yelp-inducing, cold shower in his house, I did feel more immune to the winter chill. But oh, those two minutes!

I’m sticking with my hot bucket baths.

What's it like?

Mba’echapa people! This is just my second day back in site after two weeks stateside. (Probably the best thing about Peace Corps is being able to say, “Oh, when I’m at post…” or “So, what’s happening stateside…” etc etc.) A volcano in Chile delayed me for a day, but I spent a lot of time with my cousins in upstate NY, followed by a trip to Philadelphia, a day in NYC, and a week in the Hub (Boston).

While I was there, a recurring question kept surfacing: “What is it like?”

Not for nothing was Peace Corps’ old slogan was “The toughest job you’ll ever love.” It’s true. Peace Corps is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It is also the most aggravating, infuriating, depressing, boring, wrath-inducing, bewildering, challenging thing I’ve ever done. I’ve never failed so many times in my life. I’ve watched rabbits die, attempts to form commissions wither into nothingness, and I’ve seen initial enthusiasm move into community-wide apathy. While I’m confident people in my community like me and to a certain point, respect me, my status as an outsider, my questionable ability with the language, and

I bring this all up because recently, I started a project recently aimed at cultivating local Paraguayan herbs for internal and external sales. “Yuyos” can be any kind of plant, but Paraguayans often refer to them as the plants they put in their mate or terere, especially to treat for different medical conditions. One yuyo might lower blood pressure; another might alleviate nerves, etc. Much of it is psychological, but some of these herbs DO have actual medicinal properties.

Shortly before I went home for a visit, I invited a technician to my site to do a charla on how to cultivate some of these herbs. (In this case, it was jaguarete ka’a, a bitter, cactus looking kind of plant.) We ended up presenting to five people, who expressed a great deal of enthusiasm about the project. After all, its zero cost, uses locally available materials, and would pay significantly more than cultivating corn.

So it was a little surprising today to be sitting with Ña Dora and have her tell me, “Santo, no one wants to do the yuyo project. It’s really weird and fucked up and it’s just easier to plant corn.”

It brings some questions to mind. Did she talk to everyone? Is this an example of typical Paraguayan indirectness? Is she merely prejudiced against the project herself? Why didn’t anyone else say this to me earlier? What should I do now?

And in the meantime, as she’s telling me “That was a stupid idea,” I have to keep my cool. “It was just an idea,” I say. “No big deal!”

Meanwhile, the mind seethes and rages. “It’s a great project!!!” I’m thinking.

And that, my friends, is the frustration of the Peace Corps.

On the other hand, shortly before I left to go stateside two weeks ago, I had a completely different work experience. After months of trying to get a school garden built, I, my director, and another teacher ended up building our garden in the space of four days. In the same few weeks, I helped one family improve their garden, did dental charlas with three grades in the middle school, repaired a fogon, and created a fogon project with two other Peace Corps Volunteers to build a new type of fogon with 18 families in our respective communities. It was practically sublime.

The toughest job you’ll ever love…

I'm Back.

Hello everybody. It’s been a long time. Many of you know about my computer troubles, but for those who don’t, the electricity in my site fried both my battery and my charger about three and a half months ago. Access to the internet has been very spotty, and although I have tried to write in a journal, the times when I have had internet, I haven’t had time to transcribe those entries or do much more than send some emails or upload a few photos to facebook. However, I do have a lot to share with you all, including some successful projects carried out, some work I did in the school, some general reflections about what’s happened up to this point, my visit home, and a couple of entries about Paraguay’s bicentennial.

Delayed post

Here are some photos of the first fogon Franco and i rehabbed. enjoy...

Long field, and a win!

So for all of our readers, it's just a couple days shy of my halfway point - that is, a year and six weeks - of my 27 months down here.

This means that a whole new bunch of aspirantes (trainees) are on the ground in Paraguay ready to save the world (mis pesimas muchachos!), and are going through their training period right now. My bosses sent out four of the aspirantes and one of their trainers to my site for Long-Field-Practice. The basic idea of it all is that trainees spend a week living with Paraguayan families in a rural community working on projects with seasoned volunteers (hi).

Anyways, I'm happy to say it was a roaring success.

We built a fogon for my host mom, Ña Dora. I haven't talked a whole lot about my attempts to start commissions in my site, but I've basically gotten nowhere on that front. Anyways, I bought some bricks, Peace Corps bought the stove-top and oven, and the trainees, I and a volunteer named Franco constructed the oven.

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Of course, there's a larger debate here about how I shouldn't be doing work like this unless the community itself is willing to work to get these items, but I'm tired of pushing and pushing and getting nowhere.

And the bottom line is that I'm sick of the fact that my host mom - who has taught me, suffered my ignorance and clueless gringo-ness, who has shown me a mountain of kindness and generosity - has had to cook on the ground hunched over a smoky fire for the last sixty years. So I'm saying its rent and calling it a day...

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The trainees - Riso, Jenny, Eric and Emily - did a fantastic job. They spent their time integrating with families, they worked really hard, and they all had freakishly good attitudes, despite two having diarrhea.

They also worked on two charlas, which they gave at the elementary school on their last day in the community. I've got a feeling I'll be getting the question "When are your friends coming back???" a lot for the next couple of months.

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To top it all off, Franco and I built a brocal around my well, which means that cow poop will no longer be able to (potentially) run into said well during really heavy rainstorms.

Dead rabbits

A few months ago, I decided that it would be an interesting experiment to try to start breeding rabbits with my neighbor, Ernesto. My thinking behind this was pretty simple: in Potrero Pucu, folks generally raise cows, pigs, ducks, and chickens. Other livestock is around and available (goats, sheep, even ostriches) but nowhere near the community.

So raising rabbits seemed like a way to promote another kind of meat (which has value in its own right) as well as a way to promote creative thinking, and since rabbits are fairly low maintenance – seriously, they eat just about anything besides parsley – they’re a cheap and additional source of protein for people down here.

Sounds reasonable, right? Heh.

Rebecca, a volunteer nearby – and our resident rabbit whiz – came out to my site and helped me build a rabbit hutch, and brought some rabbits to help me start my project. Two of them were pregnant. This was an opportunity, but also a problem, as the babies were born before I or Ernesto’s family were really ready for them.

The leverets fell out of their hutch several times, and even though I made some adjustments, all the babies ended up disappearing or dying. But rookie mistakes, right? This is Peace Corps. We adapt.

A few days later, one of the rabbits escaped out of the top of its hutch, which hadn’t been fastened properly.

This was annoying, but also not catastrophic. Benito (my host brother) and I made a second hutch and tightened up the first hutch. We’d made them out of fresh bamboo, which had loosened as it dried. Still, the hutches seemed to be working, even if they weren’t Frank Gehry masterpieces. This wasn’t the Chuchi Corps, after all. What did it matter if the hutches didn’t look super pretty, as long as they adequately housed the rabbits?

Rebecca found me a stud rabbit to impregnate the two remaining females. Everything seemed to be cruising along.

Then, a few weeks ago, a crushing wind – the strongest I’ve yet experienced in Paraguay – came through our site and knocked the hutches over. The male rabbit decided that Liberty was more valuable than an easy life of indulgence or readily available carrots and, embracing that most American of traditions, bailed. ( So much for those hutches being ugly but structurally sound)

So now there were only two… But they were supposed to be pregnant, so no big deal, right? Despite the fact that there was no longer a stud rabbit, we’d momentarily have up to 16 rabbits. I went to Asuncion earlier this week confident that the issues had been resolved – after all, the hutches were secure, reinforced, the rabbits seemed healthy and well fed.

Of course, when I returned to site on Wednesday, my host brother Andres casually remarked that one of the rabbits seemed to be a little sick. Its eyes were pink, he said.

This turned out to be a classic Paraguayan understatement. I found the rabbit shuffling miserably in its cage, basically blind. One eye was shut with what looked like conjunctivitis, lost in inflamed pink tissue. The other eye was a gasp-inducing mess of pus and blood that trickled to its mucous clogged nose. Even breathing seemed to be difficult for the little creature. In a hurried phone conference with Rebecca, I learned that the disease was probably one of two ailments, both lethal and highly contagious.

So I dispatched the bunny and burned its body, hoping it hadn’t infected the one. Remaining. Rabbit.

I should add I’m generally not a negligent pet owner. I’ve owned cats, hamsters, taken care of dogs, etc. I also worked at a zoo for two years – I’ve helped care for scorpions, snow leopards, groundhogs, and skinks!

But rabbits, man.

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Joking aside, it’s been an instructive, embarrassing, and disheartening little snafu. It’s also a good case-study of the pitfalls that PCVs can face.

I approached the whole experiment with a laissez-faire attitude, that my neighbors would do a decent job caring for the rabbits and only need occasional oversight. But they weren’t proactive about telling me about problems, and had different attitudes about what constituted decent care for the rabbits. The creatures got enough food, but Ernesto didn’t upkeep the cages until after a rabbit had escaped. So if you’re going to do a project in this kind of environment, you can’t take a hands-off approach to it.

More photos

These are a few random photos that I like but haven't uploaded yet.

Vacation with folks

These pictures are from my parents' visit down here, and the week we spent in Buenos Aires. I'll post more text later.
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UPDATE

My parents came to visit Paraguay in early February. They spent a couple of days in Asuncion (making the obligatory trips to the few museums we could find that were open) before heading to Potrero Pucu with me.

They spent the week in the campo with me, eating tallarín, drinking maté and terere, and getting to know the tranquilo lifestyle of Paraguay.

That chair you see above was the "presidential throne" of Mariscal Francisco Solano Lopez, one of the most infamous presidents of Paraguay (and the one who was in power during La Guerra de la Triple Allianza" - the War of the Triple Alliance, in which 8 out of 10 of Paraguay's male population died in action.)

The Brutalist style cement building is the National Library in Buenos Aires. And the multicolored buildings in the last shot is el Caminito in a neighborhood of Buenos Aires called "la Boca."